Prior art snack-food cartons suffer from a number of disadvantages. Consumers of snack food frequently want the convenience of immediately eating the snack food directly from the carton. This is done by opening the top of the carton, then reaching the hand into the carton, then withdrawing a morsel of the snack food, then immediately placing this morsel in the mouth. The top of the open prior art cartons are frequently too small to permit convenient passage of the hand. This causes undesirable contact between the hand and the inside of the walls. This contact scratches the hand and can transfer particles of food, salt or seasonings from the carton to the hand. In order to avoid contact with the top of the carton, the consumer resorts to various strategies.
One strategy is to tear the top of the carton to reduce the distance between the top and the morsels inside. While this strategy does decrease the distance to the morsels it creates other problems. Food particles can be dislodged during the tearing process. If a portion of the carton is completely torn off it creates a disposal problem. If only partially torn off it waves about undesirably dropping food particles outside the carton.
Another strategy is to tilt the bag to an almost horizontal position, sometimes with a shaking motion to advance the morsels toward the open top. This strategy too has a number of problems. One problem is that a certain degree of skill is required. This degree of skill is frequently not possessed by consumers who are either handicapped or of tender years. Another problem is that the morsels can fall to the ground. In any case the open top of the carton in the horizontal position is, of course, no bigger than it was in the vertical position.
Another problem in prior snack food cartons is that the consumer cannot see the food they are purchasing. This leads to sales resistance.
Many prior art cartons for snack food cannot be filled by existing packaging machinery.